Opinie o ebooku The Yellow Snake - Edgar Wallace

Fragment ebooka The Yellow Snake - Edgar Wallace

Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace (April 1, 1875–February 10, 1932)
was a prolific British crime writer, journalist and playwright, who
wrote 175 novels, 24 plays, and countless articles in newspapers
and journals. Over 160 films have been made of his novels, more
than any other author. In the 1920s, one of Wallace's publishers
claimed that a quarter of all books read in England were written by
him. (citation needed) He is most famous today as the co-creator of
"King Kong", writing the early screenplay and story for the movie,
as well as a short story "King Kong" (1933) credited to him and
Draycott Dell. He was known for the J. G. Reeder detective stories,
The Four Just Men, the Ringer, and for creating the Green Archer
character during his lifetime. Source: Wikipedia

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Chapter1

There was no house in Siangtan quite like Joe Bray's. For the
matter of that, Joe was unique even in China, to which so many
unusual personalities have drifted since the days of Marco
Polo.

The house was of stone and had been designed by one Pinto
Huello, a drunken Portuguese architect, who had left Portugal in
circumstances discreditable to himself, and had drifted via Canton
and Wuchau to this immense and untidy town.

The general theory is that Pinto drew his plans after a night of
delirium in a paradise of smoke, and had amended them in remorse.
The change of plans came when the building was half erected, so
that the portion of 'Northward' which had so strong a resemblance
to the porcelain tower, stood for Pinto in his unregenerate mood,
and all that had any likeness to a riverside go-down fairly
represented the erratic Portuguese in the period of reaction.

Joe was big and many-chinned, a mountain of a man who loved
China and gin and his long daydreams. He dreamt of wonderful
things, mostly impracticable. It was his joy and delight to feel
that from this forgotten corner of the world he could pull levers
and turn switches that would produce the most profound changes in
the lot of mankind.

A lethargic Haroun al-Raschid, he would have walked in disguise
amidst the poor, showering gold upon the deserving. Only he could
never find the right kind of poor.

China is a land greatly conducive to dreaming. From where he sat
he could glimpse the crowded waters of the Siang-kiang. In the
light of the setting sun a streak of purple oil that appeared and
disappeared behind the rambling skyline of Siangtan. The rhomboid
sails of the sampans that go down to the big lake were bronze and
golden in the last red rays, and from this distance the buzzing
life of this vast hive of a city was neither apparent nor audible;
nor, for the matter of that, smellable.

Not that old Joe Bray objected to the scent which is China's. He
knew this vast land from Manchuria to Kwang-si—from Shan-tung to
the Kiao-Kio valley where the queer Mongolian folk talk pidgin
French. And China was the greater part of the world to him. The sin
and the stink of it were the normalities of life. He thought
Chinese, would have lived Chinese but for that inexorable partner
of his. He had tramped the provinces on foot, fought his way out of
more forbidden towns than any man of his years, had been stripped
for death in the Yamen of that infamous Fu-chi-ling, sometime
governor of Su-kiang, and had been carried in honour in a
mandarin's palanquin to the very court of the Daughter of
Heaven.

It was all one to Joe Bray, English by birth, American by
barefaced claim when America found most favour, for he was a
millionaire and more. His house on the little hill where the river
turns was a palace. Coal had helped, and copper, and the
trading-posts of the syndicate that went up as far as the Amur
goldfields had added to the immense reserves which had accumulated
with such marvellous rapidity in the past ten years.

Joe could sit and dream, but rarely had his dreams materialized
so faithfully as the vision which lolled in a deep deck-chair.
Fing-Su was tall for a Chinaman and good-looking by European
standards. But for the characteristic slant of his black eyes there
was nothing that was typically Chinese about him. He had the
petulant mouth and the straight, thin nose of his French mother,
the jet-black hair and peculiar pallor of old Shan Hu, that crafty
old merchant and adventurer, his father. He wore now a thick padded
silk coat and shapeless trousers that ran into his shoes. His hands
were respectfully hidden in the loose sleeves of his coat, and when
he brought one to daylight to flick the ash from his cigarette, he
returned it mechanically, instinctively, to its hiding-place.

Joe Bray signed and sipped at his potion.

"You got everything right, Fing-Su. A country that's got no head
has got no feet—it can't move—it's just gotter stand still and go
bad! That's China. There's been some big fellers here—the Mings
and—and old man Hart and Li Hung."

He sighed again, his knowledge of ancient China and her
dynasties was nothing at all.

"Money's nothing unless you use it right. Look at me, Fing-Su!
Neither chick nor child, an' worth millions—millions! My line as
they say, is finished—almost."

He rubbed his nose irritably.

"Almost," he repeated, with an air of caution. "If Certain
People do what I want 'em to do it won't be—but will Certain People
do it? That's the question."

Fing-Su surveyed him with his fathomless eyes.

"One would have imagined that you had but to express a wish for
that wish to be fulfilled."

The young Chinaman spoke with that queerly exaggerated drawl
which is peculiar to the University of Oxford. Nothing gave Joe
Bray greater pleasure than to hear his protégé's voice; the culture
in it, the pedantry of each constructed sentence, the unconscious
air of superiority of tone and manner, were music to the ears of
the dreamer.

Fing-Su was indeed a graduate of Oxford University and a
Bachelor of Arts, and Joe had performed this miracle.

"You're an educated man, Fing, and I'm a poor old roughneck
without hist'ry, geography or anything. Books don't interest me and
never did. The Bible—especially Revelation—that's a book and a
half."

He swallowed the remainder of the colourless liquor in his glass
and exhaled a deep breath.

"There's one thing, son—them shares I gave you——"

A long and awkward pause. The chair creaked as the big man moved
uncomfortably.

"It appears from somethin' He said that I oughtn't to have done
it. See what I mean? They're no value—it was one of His ideas that
they was ever got out. Not worth a cent 's far as money goes."

"Does He know that I have them?" asked Fing-Su.

Like Joe, he never referred to Clifford Lynne by name, but gave
the necessary pronoun a significant value.

"No, He doesn't." said Joe emphatically. "That's the
trouble. But he talked about 'em the other night. Said that I
mustn't part with one—not one!"

"My revered and honoured father had nine," said Fing-Su, in his
silkiest tone, "and now I have twenty-four."

Joe rubbed his unshaven chin. He was in a fret of
apprehension.

"I give 'em to you—you've been a good boy, Fing-Su… Latin an'
philos'phy an' everything. I'm crazy about education an' naturally
I wanted to do somep'n' for you. Great stuff, education." He
hesitated, pulling at his lower lip. "I'm not the kind of man who
gives a thing and takes it back again. But you know what he is,
Fing-Su."

"He hates me," said Fing-Su dispassionately. "Yesterday he
called me a yellow snake."

"Did he?" asked Joe dismally.

His tone conveyed his utter helplessness to rectify a
distressing state of affairs.

"I'll get round him sooner or later," he said, with a wan effort
to appear confident. "I'm artful, Fing-Su—got ideas back of my mind
that nobody knows. I gotta scheme now … "

He chuckled at a secret thought, but instantly became sober
again.

"… about these shares. I'll give you a couple of thousand for
'em—sterling. Not worth a cent! But I'll give you a couple of
thousand."

The Chinaman moved slightly in his chair and presently raised
his black eyes to his patron.

"Mr Bray, of what use is money to me?" he asked, almost humbly.
"My revered and honoured father left me rich. I am a poor Chinaman
with few necessities."

Fing-Su threw away his burnt-out cigarette and rolled another
with extraordinary dexterity. Almost before paper and tobacco were
in his hands they had become a smoking white cylinder.

"In Shanghai and Canton they say that the Yun Nan Company has
more money than the Government has ever seen," he said slowly.
"They say that the Lolo people found gold in Liao-Lio valley——"

"Four and a half per cent! And you could get a hundred! Up in
Shan-si there is a billion dollars worth of coal—a million times a
billion! You can't work it, I know—there is no strong man sitting
in the Forbidden City to say 'Do this' and it is done. And if there
was, he would have no army. There is an investment for your
reserves; a strong man."

"Fing-Su," he said awkwardly, "that long-faced American consul
was up here to tiffin yesterday. He got quite het up about your
Joyful Hands—said there was too many 'parlours' in the country
anyway. An' the central government's been makin' inquiries. Ho Sing
was here last week askin' when you reckoned you would be goin' back
to London."

The Chinaman's thin lips curled in a smile.

"They give too great an importance to my little club," he said.
"It is purely social—we have no politics. Mr Bray, don't you think
that it would be a good idea if Yun Nan reserves were used——?"

"They are at my bankers in Shanghai—they shall be returned,"
said Fing-Su. "I wish our friend liked me. For him I have nothing
but respect and admiration. Yellow Snake! That was unkind!"

His palanquin was waiting to carry him back to his house and Joe
Bray watched the trotting coolies until a turn of the hill road hid
them from view.

At Fing-Su's little house three men were waiting, squatting on
their haunches before the door. He dismissed his bearers and
beckoned the men into the dark mat-covered room which served him as
a study.

"Two hours after sunset, Clifford Lynne" (he gave him his
Chinese name) "comes into the city by the Gate of Beneficent Rice.
Kill him and every paper that he carries bring to me."

Clifford came to the minute, but through the Mandarin Gate, and
the watchers missed him. They reported to their master, but he
already knew of Clifford's return and the way by which he came.

"You will have many opportunities," said Fing-Su, Bachelor of
Arts. "And perhaps it is well that this thing did not happen whilst
I was in the city. Tomorrow I go back to England, and I will bring
back Power!"

Chapter2

It was exactly six months after Fing-Su left for Europe, that
the partners of Narth Brothers sat behind locked doors in their
boardroom in London, facing an unusual situation. Stephen Narth sat
at the head of the table; his big, heavy, white face with its
perpetual frown indicated that he was more than usually
troubled.

Major Gregory Spedwell, yellow and cadaverous, sat on his right.
Major Spedwell with his black, curly hair and his cigarette-stained
fingers, had a history that was not entirely military.

Facing him was Ferdinand Leggat, a wholesome John Bull figure,
with his healthy-looking face and his side-whiskers, though in
truth the wholesomeness of his appearance was not borne out by his
general character, for 'John Bull Leggat' had endured many
vicissitudes which were not wholly creditable to himself—before he
came to the anchor of comparatively respectable harbourage of Narth
Brothers Ltd.

There had been a time when the name of Narth was one with which
one could conjure in the City of London. Thomas Ammot Narth, the
father of the present head of the firm, had conducted a very
excellent, though limited, business on the Stock Exchange, and had
for his clients some of the noblest houses in England.

His son had inherited his business acumen without his
discrimination, and in consequence, whilst he had increased the
business of the firm in volume, he had accepted clients of a
character which did not find favour with the older supporters of
his firm, and when he found himself in court, as he did on one or
two occasions, disputing the accuracy of clients' instructions, the
older supporters of his house had fallen away, and he was left with
a clerk and speculator which offered him the opportunities rather
of sporadic coups than the steadiness of income which is the sure
foundation of prosperity.

He had eked out the bad times by the flotation of numerous
companies. Some of these had been mildly successful, but the
majority had pursued an inevitable and exciting course which landed
them eventually before that official whose unhappy duty it is to
arrange the winding up of companies.

It was in the course of these adventures that Stephen Narth had
met Mr Leggat, a Galician oil speculator, who also conducted a
theatrical agency and a moneylending business, and was generally to
be found on the ground floor of jerry-built flotations.

The business which had brought the three members of the firm at
nine o'clock in the morning to their cold and uninviting offices at
Minchester House had nothing whatever to do with the ordinary
business of the firm. Mr Leggat said as much, being somewhat
oracular in his methods.

"Let us have the matter fair and square," he said. "This
business of ours is as near to bankruptcy as makes no difference. I
say bankruptcy, and for the time being we will let the matter stay
right there. What may be revealed at the bankruptcy proceedings
doesn't affect Spedwell and doesn't affect me. I haven't speculated
with the company's money—neither has Spedwell."

"You knew——" began Narth hotly.

"I knew nothing." Mr Leggat waved him to silence. "The auditors
tell us that the sum of fifty thousand pounds is unaccounted for.
Somebody has been gambling on 'Change—not me; not Spedwell."

"It was on your advice——"

Again Mr Leggat held up his hand.

"This isn't the moment for recrimination. We're short fifty
thousand, more or less. Where and how are we going to raise the
money?"

His eyes met Spedwell's, and for an instant of time that
saturnine man showed evidence of approval and amusement.

"It is all very well for you fellows to talk," growled Narth,
wiping his moist face with a silk handkerchief. "You were all in
the oil speculation—both of you!"

Mr Leggat smiled and shrugged his broad shoulders, but made no
comment.

"Fifty thousand pounds is a lot of money." Spedwell spoke for
the first time.

"An awful lot," agreed his friend, and waited for Mr Narth to
speak.

"We didn't come here today to discuss what we already know,"
said Narth impatiently, "but to find a remedy. How are we going to
face the music? That is the question."

"And simply answered, I think," said Mr Leggat, almost jovially.
"I for one have no desire to face again—when I say 'again' let me
correct myself and say for the first time—the miseries of Wormwood
Scrubbs. We have—I should say you have—got to raise the money.
There remains only one possibility," said Mr Leggat slowly, and all
the time he was speaking his keen eyes did not leave Stephen
Narth's face. "You are the nephew or cousin of Mr Joseph Bray, and,
as all the world knows, Mr Joseph Bray is rich beyond the dreams of
avarice. He is reputedly the wealthiest man in China, and I
understand—correct me if I am wrong—that you and your family are in
receipt of a yearly stipend—pension—from this gentleman——"

"Two thousand a year," broke in Narth loudly. "That has nothing
whatever to do with this business!"

Mr Leggat glanced at the Major and smiled.

"The man who allows you two thousand a year must be approachable
on one side or another. To Joseph Bray fifty thousand pounds is
that!" He snapped his finger. "My dear Narth, this is the
situation. In four months' time, possibly sooner, you will stand
your trial at the Old Bailey, unless you can secure the money to
lock up the bloodhounds who will soon be on your trail."

"On all our trails," said Narth sullenly. "I'm not going
alone—understand that! And you can get out of your head the idea
that I can persuade old Joe Bray to send me a cent more. He is as
hard as nails and his manager is harder. You don't suppose that I
haven't tried him before, do you? I tell you he is impossible."

Mr Leggat looked at Major Spedwell again, and they both sighed
and rose as though some signal, invisible to Narth, had been
given.

"We will meet the day after tomorrow," said Leggat, "and you had
better work the cable to China, because the only alternative to Mr
Joseph Bray may be even more unpleasant than penal servitude."

"What do you mean?" demanded Narth, rage in his smouldering
eyes.

"I mean," said Mr Leggat, as he lit a cigar with great
deliberation, "the assistance of the gentleman named Mr Grahame St
Clay."

"And who the devil is Grahame St Clay?" asked the astonished
Narth.

Mr Leggat smiled cryptically.

Chapter3

Stephen Narth ordinarily left his office in Old Broad Street at
four o'clock, at which hour his limousine was waiting to carry him
to his beautiful house at Sunningdale. But this evening he lingered
on, not because he had any especial business to transact, or
because he needed the time to brood over his unfortunate position,
but because the China mail was due by the five o'clock post, and he
expected the monthly draft to which Leggat had made reference.

Joseph Bray was his second cousin, and in the days when the
Narths were princes of commerce and the Brays the poorest of poor
relations (they called themselves Bray-Narth, but old Joseph had
dropped the hyphenated style, being a man of little education), the
great family was scarcely cognisant of Joe Bray's movements. Until,
ten years before, Mr Narth had received a letter from his cousin
saying that he was anxious to get in touch with his only relative,
they were unaware that such a man as Joseph existed, and Mr Stephen
Narth's first inclination, as he read the ill-spelt, illiterate
letter, was to tear it up and throw it into the wastepaper basket,
for he had sufficient troubles of his own without being called upon
to shoulder the burden of distant relatives. It was only at the
tag-end of the letter that he discovered his correspondent was that
Bray whose name was famous in the Stock Exchanges of the world—the
veritable Bray, of Yun Nan Concession. Thereafter, Joseph assumed a
new importance.

They had never met. He had seen a photograph of the old man,
grim and grey and hard, and it was probably this picture which had
inhibited those appeals for further help which he so glibly claimed
to have sent.

Perkins, his clerk, came in with a letter soon after five.

"Miss Joan came this afternoon, sir, whilst you were at the
board meeting."

"Oh!" replied Stephen Narth indifferently.

Here was a Bray that represented a responsibility, one of the
two members of the cadet family he had known about until old
Joseph's letter came. She was a distant cousin, had been brought up
in his home and had received the good but inexpensive education to
which poor relations are entitled. Her position in his household he
would have found it difficult to define. Joan was very useful. She
could take charge of the house when the girls were away. She could
keep accounts and could replace a housekeeper or, for the matter of
that, a housemaid. Though she was a little younger than Letty, and
very much younger than Mabel, she could serve to chaperone
either.

Sometimes she joined the theatre parties that the girls
organized, and occasionally she went to a dance when an extra
partner was wanted. But usually Joan Bray remained in the
background. There were times when it was inconvenient even that she
should join one of his select little dinner parties, and then Joan
had her meal in her big attic room, and, if the truth be told, was
more than a little relieved.

"What did she want?" asked Mr Narth as he cut open the flap of
the only letter that counted.

"She wanted to know if there was anything to take back to
Sunningdale. She came up to do some shopping with Miss Letty," said
his old clerk, and then: "She asked me if any of the young ladies
had telephoned about the Chinamen."

"Chinamen?"

Perkins explained. There had appeared that morning in the
grounds of Sunni Lodge two yellow men, "not wearing much clothing
either." Letty had seen them lying in the long grass near the farm
meadow—two powerful-looking men, who at the sight of her had leapt
up and had fled to the little plantation which divided Lord
Knowesley's estate from the less pretentious domain of Mr
Narth.

"Miss Letty was a little frightened," said Perkins.

Miss Letty, who lived on the raw edge of hysteria, would be
frightened, undoubtedly.

"Miss Joan thought the men belonged to a circus which passed
through Sunningdale this morning," said Perkins.

Mr Narth saw little in the incident, and beyond making a mental
note to bring the matter to the notice of the local police,
dismissed from his mind all thought of Chinamen.

Slowly he tore open the flap of the envelope. The cheque was
there, but also, as he had realized when he handled the package, a
letter of unusual length. Joe Bray was not in the habit of sending
long epistles. As a rule, a sheet of paper bearing the inscription
'With Comps.' was all that accompanied the draft.

He folded the purple-coloured draft and put it into his pocket,
and then began to read the letter, wondering why this relative of
his had grown suddenly so communicative. It was written in his own
crabbed hand and every fourth word was mis-spelt.

Dear Mr Narth (Joe never addressed him in any other
way).

I dare say you will wonder why I have written to you such a long
letter. Well, dear Mr Narth, I must tell you that I have had a bad
stroke, and am only getting better very slowly. The doctor says he
can't be sure how long I've got to live, so I thought I would fix
up the future and make a will, which I have now done, through Mr
Albert Van Rys, the lawyer. Dear Mr Narth, I must tell you that I
have got a great admiration for your family, as you well know, and
I have been long thinking how I should help your family, and this
is what I have done. My manager, Clifford Lynne, who has been with
me since a boy and was my partner when I found this reef, is a good
young fellow (Clifford Lynne, I mean), so I have decided he should
marry into my family and keep the name going. I know you have
several girls in your house, two daughters and a cousin, and I want
Clifford to marry one of these, which he has agreed to do. He is on
his way over now and should be with you any day. My will is as
follows: I leave you two thirds of my share in the mine, one-third
to Clifford, on condition that one of these girls marries him. If
these girls refuse, all the money goes to Clifford. The marriage is
to occur before the thirty-first of December of this year. Dear Mr
Narth, if this is not agreeable to you, you will get nothing on my
death.

Yours sincerely,

Jos. Bray.

Stephen Narth read the letter open-mouthed, his mind in a whirl.
Salvation had come from the most unexpected quarter. He rang a bell
to summon the clerk and gave him a few hasty instructions, and, not
waiting for the lift, ran down the stairs and boarded his car. All
the way to Sunningdale he turned over in his mind the letter and
its strange proposal.

Mabel, of course! She was the eldest. Or Letty—the money was as
good as in his pocket…

As the car went up the drive between bushes of flowering
rhododendrons he was almost gay, and he sprang out with a smile so
radiant that the watchful Mabel, who saw him from he lawn, realized
that something unusual had happened and came running to meet him,
as Letty appeared at the big front door. They were handsome girls,
a little plumper than he could wish, and the elder inclined to take
a sour view of life which was occasionally uncomfortable.

"… Did you hear about those horrid Chinamen?" Mabel
fired the question as he stepped from the car. "Poor Letty nearly
had a fit!"

Ordinarily he would have snapped her to silence, for he was a
man who was irritated by the trivialities of life, and the
irruption of a yellow trespasser or two was not a matter to
interest him. But now he could afford to smile indulgently and
could make a joke of his daughter's alarming experience.

"My dear, there was nothing to be afraid of—yes, Perkins told me
all about it. The poor fellows were probably as much scared as
Letty! Come into the library; I have something rather important to
tell you."

He took them into the handsomely appointed room, shut the door
and told his astonishing news, which, to his consternation, was
received silently. Mabel took out her perennial cigarette, flicked
the ash on the carpet and looked across at her sister, and
then:

"It's all very fine for you, father, but where do we come in?"
she asked.

"Where do you come in?" said her parent in astonishment. "Isn't
it clear where you come in? This fellow gets a third of the
fortune——"

"But how much of the third do we get?" asked Letty, the younger.
"And besides, who is this manager? With all that money, father, we
ought to do better than a mine manager."

There was a dead silence here which Mabel broke.

"We shall have to depend on you for the settlement, anyway," she
said. "This old gentleman seems to think it quite good enough for
any girl if her husband is rich. But it wouldn't be good enough for
me."

Stephen Narth turned suddenly cold. He had never dreamt that
opposition would come from this quarter.

"But don't you see, girls, that unless one of you marries this
fellow we get nothing? Of course I would do the right thing by
you—I'd make a handsome settlement."

"How much is he leaving?" asked the practical Mabel. "That's the
crux of the whole question. I tell you frankly I'm not going to buy
a pig in a poke; and besides, what is to be our social position?
We'd probably have to go back to China and live in some horrible
shanty."

She sat on the edge of the library table, clasping her crossed
knee, and in this attitude she reminded Stephen Narth of a barmaid
he had known in his early youth. There was something coarse about
Mabel which was not softened by the abbreviation of her skirts or
by the beauty of her shingled head.

"I've had enough scrimping and saving," she went on, "and I tell
you honestly, that so far as marriage with an unknown man is
concerned, you can count me out."

"And me," said Letty firmly. "It is quite right what Mabel says,
there is no position at all for this wretched man's wife."

"I dare say he would do the right thing," said Stephen Narth
feebly. He was entirely dominated by these two daughters of
his.

Suddenly Mabel leapt to her feet and stepped down to the floor,
her eyes shining.

"I've got it—Cinderella!"

"Cinderella?" He frowned.

"Joan, of course, you great booby! Read the letter again."

They listened breathlessly, and when he came near to the end,
Letty squeaked her delight.

"Of course—Joan!" she said. "There's no reason why Joan
shouldn't marry. It would be an excellent thing for her—her
prospects are practically nil, and she'd be an awful bore, father,
if you were very rich. Goodness knows what we could do with
her."

"Joan!" He fondled his chin thoughtfully. Somehow he had never
considered Joan as a factor. For the fourth time he read the letter
word by word. The girls were right. Joan fulfilled all Joe Bray's
requirements. She was a member of the family. Her mother had been a
Narth. Before he had put the letter down, Letty had pressed the
bell on the table and the butler came in.

"Tell Miss Bray to come here, Palmer," she said, and three
minutes later a girl walked into the library—the sacrifice which
the House of Narth designed to propitiate the gods of fortune.